As shown in FIG. 1, cladding of a filler metal on a base metal can be accomplished by welding with a bead-by-bead basis. To ensure the seamlessness of the weld overlay, overlapping of one bead on the previous one is necessary so that the desired overlay thickness can be obtained when the material is removed from the outer surface. The more overlap of the beads, the less material that needs to be removed to provide the smooth surface on the component. FIG. 1 shows a typical three overlapped beads. After machining, a weld overlay with height 54 and width 60 can be obtained, as shown in FIG. 2. If the spacing of each of the beads 10 (bead-to-bead) is extended which results in less overlap 40 between the beads 10, more materials will be removed to keep the cladding surface even, which results in a reduced height of the weld overlay. If there is no overlap built up between any two beads, there will be no weld overlay left after machining the beads for an even surface.
Therefore, a cladding system and process and method for applying a cladding that does not suffer from the above drawbacks are desirable in the art.